she's dead!" She wiped her eyes with a
rapid gesture of her hands, and continued: "I'm sorry for her. She was
not yet fifty. She had a long life before her still. But when you
look at it from the other side you can't help thinking that death is
easier than such a life--always alone, a stranger to everybody, needed
by no one, scared by the shouts of my father. Can you call that living?
People live waiting for something good, and she had nothing to expect
except insults."

"You're right, Natasha," said the mother musingly. "People live
expecting some good, and if there's nothing to expect, what sort of a
life is it?" Kindly stroking Natasha's hand, she asked: "So you're
alone now?"

"Alone!" the girl rejoined lightly.

The mother was silent, then suddenly remarked with a smile:

"Never mind! A good person does not live alone. People will always
attach themselves to a good person."

Natasha was now a teacher in a little town where there was a textile
mill, and Nilovna occasionally procured illegal books, proclamations,
and newspapers for her. The distribution of literature, in fact,
became the mother's occupation. Several times a month, dressed as a
nun or as a peddler of laces or small linen articles, as a rich
merchant's wife or a religious pilgrim, she rode or walked about with a
sack on her back, or a valise in her hand. Everywhere, in the train,
in the steamers, in hotels and inns, she behaved simply and
unobtrusively. She was the first to enter into conversations with
strangers, fearlessly drawing attention to herself by her kind,
sociable talk and the confident manner of an experienced person who has
seen and heard much.

She liked to speak to people, liked to listen to their stories of life,
their complaints, their perplexities, and lamentations. Her heart was
bathed in joy each time she noticed in anybody poignant discontent with
life, that discontent which, protesting against the blows of fate,
earnestly seeks to find an answer to its questions. Before her the
picture of human life unrolled itself ever wider and more varicolored,
that restless, anxious life passed in the struggle to fill the stomach.
Everywhere she clearly saw the coarse, bare striving, insolent in its
openness, deceiving man, robbing him, pressing out of him as much sap
as possible, draining him of his very lifeblood. She realized that
there was plenty of everything upon earth, but that the people were in
want, and lived